Setting up the National, part 2

11th & 12th August

Hello. It's Sheila at the keyboard tonight.

Sunday night we went off site in a group of ten wrgies to have a meal at the nearest pub called the Pendulum. Other workers had said that the food was good. The sign in the car park was a bit off-putting. It informed us that drug taking and dealing was forbidden in the car park. When we went in the ambience was a little doubtful with several very small children and during the evening a couple of noisy football fans came in and started shouting. However they were told by a customer to shut up and amazingly they did. There was a good range of curries on offer at very reasonable prices so we all got drinks and ordered food and waited, and waited, and waited. It seemed a long time before the first person was served, it was probably three quarters of an hour later when the last person was served. The curries were very nice but perhaps a little liberal with the hot spices.

Monday was the driest day so far and we made good progress. In the morning Bruce and I were marking out the mooring positions on a section of bank just outside the show site. It involved using a surveyor's wheel which was rather fun then marking the ends of the mooring with white spray paint such as is used to mark lines on a football pitch. Pat Barton who plans the moorings must have had a merry time allowing for the length of each boat (plus a metre) with a two metre gap every six boats as a firebreak. Then there had to be an allowance for passing places at regular intervals. All this and still fit in the maximum number of boats possible.

In the afternoon Bruce was back to fencing and I was back in the admin office turning my hand to whatever came up. There were banners to put up on the outside fence to show the local people what is happening here. There were notices to laminate. The furniture and equipment was still being moved in so there was a lot to unpack. As it is early in the build up there was not yet any sense of urgency so we were able to knock off at 5.00 pm. It was very pleasant to take a can and a glass along to the workers gazebo and sit down and have a drink before dinner. We were able to meet far more of the people working in other areas than we have at previous festivals. One great advantage of this site is that all the volunteer workers are in the same compound. At previous festivals the IWA volunteers who wear blue t shirts have been in a different compound from the wrgies who wear red t shirts and there has been a lack of communication between red and blue shirts.

This morning was wet. It had been raining on and off all night. When we reached the admin area we discovered that Site 1 had decreed that no wheeled vehicles should go on site until it dried a bit. Then the artic loaded with marquees arrived. Luckily the lorry could be kept on the trackway that was laid at the weekend and the marquees were offloaded from there. The next problem was that the marquee erectors took exception to the public footpath that runs across the site. Fence had been put down either side of the path to secure the site but allow the public to continue walking their dogs through the area. We hastily printed and laminated notices to explain that it was only a temporary measure and Bruce's fencers extended the fence to block the path.

We were really pleased this morning to get rid of all the recycling that we have been saving for the past couple of weeks. The skips are in place to take a full range of recycling. Bruce commented that the attachment points on the skips for lifting onto the lorry were blocked with special anti theft devices. It's that sort of area.

Bruce continued with fencing all day and I got on with bits and pieces in admin. Again we were glad to knock off at 5.00pm and retire to the boat. It is strange to be moored with a boat either side of us but not unpleasant. The couple on the boat inside us have a Chesapeake Bay Retriever called George (think of a brown Labrador with a semi curly coat and you're not far off) and an African Grey Parrot. George is an asset. When some stumps needed to be dug out to remove trip hazards from the towpath George was told to fetch the stick. He went into action digging and worrying at the stump until he got it out of the ground. The only job he left was to wash the mud off the boat alongside.

The parrot is a wonderful talker with a wide range of sounds. He can imitate a number of telephone ring-tones and produces a very convincing cat's miaow. Apparently he could fool their previous dog and would make it sit every time it walked past his cage. George has a better ear and can tell the parrot from his master's voice.

One of the boaters who arrived recently and moored a couple of boat lengths from the workers' moorings said jestingly that he had moored there because they had no food on board. He comes from a boating family and told us how, if a boater was down on his luck and had no food for his family he would moor at a little distance from the other boats so they couldn't see that there was no food on board. He told us of one boater, who had only bread and jam for his family at Christmas, put bacon rinds on the stove to make the smell of meat rise from the boat. It was a hard life.